I think the point ultimately is that dropped subject tests are not because Williams wants to get a lower acceptance rate. They have had the same admit rate (15-18%) for the last several years. They could have jumped to opportunities to make their admit rate even lower (like Colby making the app free and removing the essay), but they don’t need to, because they draw an incredibly distinguished applicant and admitted student pool even with that acceptance rate (while also ranking #1 among LACs in US News).
Williams is a Coalition partner school, a QuestBridge partner school, a member of COFHE, and a founding member of the American Talent Initiative. The colleges within them- Ivies, Stanford, Duke, William’s LAC peers- collaborate and discuss higher education in the context of drawing students from underrepresented backgrounds. It’s not surprising that so many of these colleges dropped the SAT 2 requirement in 2015- they must have discussed the purpose of standardized testing and what it was doing to the applicant pool. Even schools that haven’t taken a direct optional stance policy, like Harvard, have undermined the SAT 2’s; Harvard states “While we normally require two SAT Subject Tests, you may apply without them if the cost of the tests represents a financial hardship or if you prefer to have your application considered without them.”
The rise in applicants isn’t something that happened just at Williams this year. Every single Ivy, top university, or LAC I’ve seen reporting data mentions an increased number of applications this year. Williams is just noticeably higher- 22%- while most others have increased at rates of 3-8%. I think, considering Williams got rid of subject tests at the same time as the others, that this huge increase is not solely due to dropped requirements, but as the article mentions, increased outreach in many areas like international regions.